Working Together for Improved Safety, Clearance, and Communications

Reduce Traffic Congestion.Traffic incidents account for about one-quarter of all congestion on U.S. roadways. For every minute that a freeway travel lane is blocked during a peak travel period, four minutes of travel delay results after the incident is cleared. Safer, more efficient traffic incident management will reduce congestion by reducing incident duration and preventing secondary incidents.

Increase Responder Safety One of the leading causes of death and injury for emergency responders is being struck by vehicles while working alongside the highway. Improved incident management reduces responder risk by improving traffic control at incident scenes and reducing incident duration and risk exposure.

The National Unified Goal (NUG) for Traffic Incident Management is a unified national policy developed by major national organizations representing traffic incident responders, under the leadership of the NTIMC.

The NUG is not mandatory. It encourages State and local transportation and public safety agencies to adopt unified, multi-disciplinary policies, procedures, and practices that will dramatically improve the way traffic incidents are managed on U.S. roadways.

The NUG does not address funding; it describes what we need to do to improve traffic incident management. By joining together to pursue common goals, TIM stakeholders can leverage their opportunities to secure resources to pursue these goals.

The stakeholder groups included the national organizations that belong to the NTIMC and other national organizations interested in promoting the NUG. These groups represented the emergency medical services, fire and rescue, law enforcement, public safety communications, towing and recovery, and transportation sectors.